Britain To Install Missiles In Apartment Complexes For London Olympics

More 2012 Olympics dystopianism as a dense East London neighborhood will be turned into a military base, in the name of pole-vaulting. Robert Booth writes in the Guardian:

The Bow Quarter complex of more than 700 apartments is the first of a handful of housing developments close to the Olympic Park chosen by military planners to host high velocity rockets aimed at preventing an airborne terrorist attack on this summer’s Games.

Ministry of Defence officials will this week inform a number of other residents that their homes have been selected to become part of London’s military lockdown. The missile units will be installed and armed with dummy rockets in time for a national Olympic security exercise starting on Wednesday. The test of the government’s £1bn security plans will see RAF Typhoon fast jets and military helicopters operating above London and the home counties.

“It is rather surreal,” said Nathan Lewis, a software developer who lives in the block beneath where the weapons will be located. He speculated it might be a piece of “security theatre” by the authorities. “It is an example of the insane world we live in post-9/11. I don’t think anyone here feels more secure because of this.

The Olympics are increasingly an event for the rich and the political elite. Nonchalantly handing out a note to the average Joe telling him there will be SA missiles placed on the roof of his apartment complex testifies to this fact. And it will be done with Joe’s tax-dollars, of course.

How many SA batteries do you think will be placed on the roof of 10 Downing Street or on the top of HSBC? That’s what I thought.